There were more than two million robots working in Chinese factories last year, according to a report released Thursday by the International Federation of Robotics, a nonprofit trade group for makers of industrial robots. Factories in China installed nearly 300,000 new robots last year, more than the rest of the world combined, the report found.
This is why I think the narrative that China’s economy is going to collapse due to losing workers over time because of their demographics is false. I think the engineers running China are going to turn to mass automation and AI to increase their workforce’s labour productivity and maintain the ability to make everything.
Whether the Chinese workers would be able to capture more of that higher productivity than their western counterparts is an open question. Given some numbers I’ve seen, so far they have done better in this regard. But I imagine the Chinese capitalist class would be fighting tooth and nail to change that.